Muppets - Mahna Mahna

The Muppets Mahna Mahna (Tab)(PDF)

MP3

As great as Mahna Mahna is, I’ve never been able to forgive it for resulting in the worst record of all time: Vanilla No Way, No Way (but watching that on YouTube led me to remembering that Shapoo were bloody fantastic - so good truly can come from evil).

Still it’s a whole sack full of fun and great for lacing together lots of random songs. In my version, I played a bit of a solo that died a la the Muppet version and from there threw in any bit of music that took my fancy. I was just having fun with the track, so it’s jam packed full of mistakes.

A million cool points to anyone who can name all the tunes I quote.

Requested by Joe

If this is your first visit here, you can find the chords/tab in those posts by clicking on the song title in red.

Will Smith and Stefan Raab - Men in Black

The video of Will Smith singing Men in Black with Stefan Raab on the ukulele has been knocking around the net for quite a while, but there’s been a spate of people posting about it. No doubt one of the big boys posted about Men in Black on the ukulele and all the two-bit bloggers without a single original thought drifting around the cacophonous wasteland that they seem to think constitutes a brain decide to do a post about Men in Black on the ukulele. So here’s my post about Men in Black on the ukulele.

There are only two chords in it: C#m7 and F#7. When you’re strumming, keep a constant up, down rhythm but hold and release the chords to get some short chord strums along with plenty of funky clicking.

Requested by edi.

Happy Days Theme Tune

Happy Days Theme (Chords)

I thought this one would be completely straightforward, but it presented a few problems. I’m still not really sure about the ending.

In the chord sheet this one, you’ll notice a few letters in brackets. They’re not chords but single notes. So where it says “(A Ab)” you play just those notes on the G string.

When you have to change quickly from Bb or B to C, it’s easier to use the Bb chord shape moved up two frets rather than the open C chord.

I had to cheat the solo a little bit to get it to fit on the uke. I’ve tabbed it like this:

But I had shift each note in bar 3 up one notch on the major scale as there’s a Bb in the original. If you’re playing on a low-G uke, you could play it like this:

Whose Line Is It Anyway? - Hoedown

Hoedown (Chords)

The song at the end of Whose Line Is It Anyway? is always the best part. Particularly the people who are heroically bad at it (Colin Mochrie). The Irish Drinking songs are always hilarious and chaotic. Unfortunately, that makes the funniest song ever useless for fitting chords around. So, I had to go with a Chip Esten verse for the song sheet.

I was debating whether to go with Hoedown or Irish Drinking Song until I realised they had exactly the same chorder* with the addition of the extra ‘ai-dee-die-de’ section. The Irish Drinking Song is in the key of D as opposed to G for Hoedown.

You can play the little intro part either as chords or, my preferred method, with a little finger picking:

*I’m changing Ukulala’s definition. I’m using it to mean a chord progression which is the same but in a different key. Since, if there’s a word for it, I can’t remember what it is.

John Williams - Olympic Fanfare

John Williams - Olympic Fanfare (Tab)

MIDI

How fantastic were those drummers at the start of the Opening Ceremony? It certainly topped a bunch of flag girls strolling around at the LA opening ceremony in 1984 (although no change in the commentators blabbering all over the music). But the LA opening ceremony did have the first performance of the Olympic Fanfare written by John Williams for the games.

Jeff had requested tab for the Olympic Anthem/Hymn and I gave it a go but couldn’t really get it to work on the uke. I don’t think it really has a strong enough tune. Which is something you certainly couldn’t say about the Olympic Fanfare. By the time of the games, Williams had plenty of practice making grand, instantly memorable tunes for films like Star Wars, Superman and Indiana Jones.

I’ve written up the first, and most recognizable, part of the tune. The trickiest part is the triplet notes. I started out trying a few triplet strums while blocking the other strings but couldn’t get it to work. I ended up picking with my index, middle and ring fingers in succession.

I was going to record an mp3 of this, but I’m far too busy watching the batmitten, so you’ll have to put up with a midi.

Star Wars Theme (Dodge Brothers Version)

Dodge Brothers - Star Wars Theme (Tab and Chords)

Watch the video here.

For his review of the new Star Wars film, BBC film critic, Mark Kermode has forgone the raised eye brows and in-depth analysis in favour of playing the theme tune on the ukulele with his skiffle band The Dodge Brothers.

He inspired me to tab out a ukulele duet of their version. It looks like he’s in D tuning, but I’ve written it up in C. This version differs significantly from the original, so I’ll probably do a full uke version at some point in the future.

You can also watch Mark on his uke here.

Buy The Dodge Brothers

Neil Armstrong, ukebucket and other Ukulinklinks

Herald Tribune interviews the guy who took the infamous picture of Neil Armstrong strumming his ukulele on return from the moon.

ukebucket have just released two albums: one of originals, Bad Ukulele, and one of covers, Covered. You can download the covers album for free here. And buy the originals album, and I can tell you it’s worth it, here (although if you’re stuck in the 1920s and want a rotating disc, you’ll have to wait a while).

The LA Times comes out in defence of ukuleles.

17 Dots (the blog of eMusic) has a series on the ukulele.

Todd the Ukulele Evangalist sings of life as a Ukaholic (MP3 link).

Tab for the X Files theme on Des Cordes er Dubois.

The Curtis Covers Project is a kind of karaoke request blog. People suggest a song for him to cover and he posts his version - often played on ukulele. My personal favourite is Jet’s Are You Gonna Be My Girl.

Blogotheque’s Take Home Shows is an idea too good not to steal. The latest imitator, Shoot the Player, has some fine ukulele videos from Via Tania here and here. But my favourite is Laura Jean’s So Happy It Hurts.

Eddie Vedder discusses the uke’s size to melody ratio.

Fawlty Towers and Dream a Little Dream on Uker Tabs.

How much should you pay a menstruating ukulele player?

The Office: An American Workplace Theme

The Office: An American Workplace (Tab)

MP3

Transatlantic comedy adaptations are usually a catastrophic failure (Coupling and IT Crowd are two that leap immediately to mind) but both versions of The Office are great. I may well be lynched for saying this, but I actually prefer the US version of The Office to the British one. The only thing I don’t like about both Offices is the way Jim/Tim is held up as a kind of hero. He’s much more of a loser than Micheal/David and Dwight/Gareth who actually seem to enjoy their lives and their jobs. And, worst of all, he takes his frustrations out by bullying people. Anyone with half a brain can see that Dwight is the real hero for being himself no matter how out of step with the rest of the world that might be. Anyhoo, on to matters musical.

The theme tune translates fairly well to the uke, but there are some tricky parts. There are some rapid notes on the A string that have to be picked alternately by the index and middle finger (like you’re doing a running man with your fingers). Also, the run at the end goes up to the 17th fret. My uke doesn’t have a 17th fret, so I had to do a bit of fretless playing. Alternatively, you could give it a shorter ending such as this:

Sesame Street

Sesame Street (Chords)

Where can I go without my ukulele? In tribute to the classic broken ukulele sketch, here are the chords to the Sesame Street theme tune.

The tune starts off with a bit of blues shuffle which goes like this:

All the strums are down strums apart from the next to last one in the second and fourth bars.

I prefer to make it more hardcore and bluesy like this:

For the “…tell me how to get…” part you can just play F7 and G. But I like to double the melody like this:

Requested by Artifus.

Ukulele Halloween: London Bridge Is Falling Down

London Bridge Is Falling Down (midi)

There’s something very sinister about most nursery rhymes. Most real nursery rhymes. The ones that have been passed down through the generations, not the ones that have been passed down from purple dinosaurs. They’re quite often used in horror films (such as The Haunting) and this particular tune was co-opted for the Silver Shamrock theme in Halloween 3.

There are a few of ways you could pick this tune. Each time two notes are picked together, you could pick them with your thumb and index finger. This is a perfectly good way of doing it, but I prefer another way.

I position my hand so that each finger has its own string (those of you that have signed up for the fingerpicking course will be familiar with it) but I’ll use my thumb to pick the bottom note of each pair. So, the first note of bar 1 I’ll pick with my thumb and index finger. The first note of bar 2 I’ll pick with my thumb and middle finger. It seems a strange way to do it, but it’s the way that feels most natural to me. Experiment with these two (and any alternatives you can think of) and see which feels best to you.

Suggested by West

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